Two years ago, President Obama was cheered in the Middle East and around the world as he toured capital cities on a diplomatic mission of reconciliation following an administration defined by two wars.

Last week looked a little different.

Crowds shouted "down with Obama" in Mali, burned him in effigy in Sri Lanka and, in Spain, brought back a slogan once used to attack George W. Bush -- "no more blood for oil."

Obama's decision to enter Libya in hopes of preventing a slaughter at the hands of Muammar al-Qaddafi could, despite its best intentions, accelerate a public-opinion shift in some quarters of the world away from the U.S. president.

That shift has been under way for some time. Though polls showed Obama's popularity soaring as he prepared to deliver his speech to the Muslim world in Egypt in the summer 2009, that affection appeared to have waned by the following year. International polling conducted last summer showed confidence in Obama plummeting in key Muslim countries.

The U.S. intervention in Libya could compound the public-relations trouble the Obama administration is having in the Middle East. His efforts to jump-start the Israeli-Palestinian peace process have fallen by the wayside, and new violence rocked Jerusalem last week; he has not closed Guantanamo Bay as promised and has, to the contrary, brought back military tribunals in a limited capacity; and the administration has struggled in Pakistan to smooth things over after a CIA contractor shot and killed two Pakistani men allegedly trying to rob him.

As the U.S. aligns with European allies for a crippling military campaign against Qaddafi, it's still unclear whether the broader Muslim community will support the intervention or turn against it.

Though the Arab League gave its endorsement to a no-fly zone before one was imposed, the organization later expressed concern about the possibility of civilian casualties.

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I'M A DEPLORABLE KNUCKLEHEAD THAT SUPPORTS PRESIDENT TRUMP. MAY GOD BLESS HIM AND KEEP HIM SAFE.

"We need to invade Libya with Depleted Uranium to stop them from distributing water to their people. If we do not poison the water supply like we did in the Gulf with Corexit and we did in the Pacific with Stuxnet, then how will our plan for 2050 be possible?"

WASHINGTON – More than one billion urban residents will face serious water shortages by 2050 as climate change worsens effects of urbanization, with Indian cities among the worst hit, a study said Monday. The shortage threatens sanitation in some of the world's fastest-growing cities but also poses risks for wildlife if cities pump in water from outside, said the article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study found that under current urbanization trends, by mid-century some 993 million city dwellers will live with less than 100 liters (26 gallons) each day of water each -- roughly the amount that fills a personal bathtub -- which authors considered the daily minimum. Adding on the impact of climate change, an additional 100 million people will lack what they need for drinking, cooking, cleaning, bathing and toilet use.

CLIVE STAPLES LEWIS:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

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All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

Regrettably, the international community has yet to take serious action to prevent a moral and humanitarian catastrophe in Libya and the Libyan opposition is now on the defensive. As forces loyal to Muammar Qaddafi push eastward, we are concerned that the brutal and indiscriminate tactics of government forces could lead to additional civilian casualties.

On Saturday, the Arab League endorsed Libyan opposition calls for a no fly zone. We call on you to urgently institute a no fly zone over key Libyan cities and towns in conjunction with U.S. allies. We also call on you to explore the option of targeted strikes against regime assets in an effort to prevent further bloodshed. The United States should also immediately recognize the Libyan National Transitional Council and take all necessary actions to support their efforts to unseat the Qaddafi regime.

In your inaugural address two years ago, you said this: "And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more."

Today the United States and its allies should stand with the men, women and children of Libya who seek a future of peace and dignity. The situation in Libya in the coming days will not just impact the Libyan people. As protests continue against repressive regimes around the world, the message currently being conveyed by our inaction is that killing and repression will go unpunished and are the best option for despots seeking to postpone reform.

For the sake of our security as well as America's credibility with people who seek freedom everywhere, we ask you to act as quickly as possible to ensure that the people of Libya – and the world – know that we are willing to back up our principles with action.

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

Sheik Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them – even though they exaggerated this issue – he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers (muslims). To conclude my speech, I’d like to say that the only thing I hope for is that as my life approaches its end, Allah will give me an opportunity to go to the land of Jihad and resistance, even if in a wheelchair. I will shoot Allah’s enemies, the Jews, and they will throw a bomb at me, and thus, I will seal my life with martyrdom. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds. Allah’s mercy and blessings upon you. Would America have allowed Hitler's henchmen to open a "news organization"?

The annihilationist Sunni Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi, though banned in U.S., opens a Washington D.C. Office of Islamist News Organization, Says It (IslamOnline) Is "The Jihad of Our Era" Sheik Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: Allah Imposed Hitler upon the Jews to Punish Them - "Allah Willing, the Next Time Will Be at the Hand of the Believers"

During the past month, Imam Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual guide to the Muslim Brotherhood, has called on Muslims to acquire nuclear weapons "to terrorize their enemies." He also boycotted an interfaith meeting with Jews on grounds he believes they support murdering Muslims in Palestine, and he additionally said Muslims are permitted to kill Israeli women because they serve in the army.

This continues Qaradawi's long-established support of violent jihad. But despite this record, he has been embraced as a "moderate" Muslim by his defenders in the West and the Arab world. In a September interview, former London Mayor Ken Livingstone said "the fact that Sheikh Qaradawi has been banned [from Britain] is a disgrace; he is one of the leading progressive voices in the Muslim world." Livingstone blamed "a huge smear campaign organized by Zionists."

In America, John Esposito, a religious scholar who is close to the Brotherhood, has called Qaradawi a supporter of a "reformist interpretation of Islam and its relationship to democracy, pluralism and human rights." The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and prominent Islamists like Tariq Ramadan, grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, have expressed similar sentiments about Qaradawi.

Barrie Osborne, producer of Hollywood blockbusters like The Lord of the Rings and The Matrix, has hired Qaradawi as a consultant for a movie about the Prophet Mohammed. Last month, Qaradawi was given a medal for public service by King Abdullah of Jordan.

Qaradawi has won these awards despite a long record of anti-Semitism and advocating violence against purported enemies of islam. Consider the following examples:

In an interview last month with Al-Jazeera's Arabic-language service, Qaradawi was asked if Muslims should try to get atomic weapons "to terrorize their enemies." Qaradawi replied that this goal would be permissible, saying he was "happy" to learn that Pakistan had such a nuclear weapon to defend itself. Qaradawi explained that that was the meaning of Koranic verses urging Muslims "to terrorize thereby the enemy of God and your enemy."

Support for Iran and Muslim rights to possess nuclear technology have been recurring themes for Qaradawi.

"It is obligatory on all Muslims to resist any possible attack the US might launch against Iran," Qaradawi said in a 2007 interview. "The U.S. is an enemy of Islam that has already declared war on Islam under the disguise of war on terrorism and provides Israel with unlimited support."

It was wrong to deny Iran the right to ostensibly peaceful nuclear technology so long as the United States and Israel had nuclear weapons, he said.

Last month, Qaradawi boycotted the 8th Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue conference in Qatar, saying he opposes discourse with Jews on principle.

"How can we conduct a dialogue in a time when they seize lands, shed blood, burn farms, and demolish houses? Palestine's conundrum has to be resolved first before we sit together at the same table," he said.

A source close to Qaradawi told the Egyptian newspaper al-Masry al-Youm that the imam does not oppose talking to Jews because of their religious affiliation, noting that he has met with representatives of the anti-Zionist Neturai Karta, an organization seen here attending a Holocaust-denial conference staged by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Neturai Karta are Jews who reject the principles of Zionism and the occupation of Muslim lands, although "the majority of Jews at present are with the actions of murder in Palestine," the source said in explaining Qaradawi's willingness to talk to the group.

In a recorded address last month to a Hamas-organized parley in Gaza, Qaradawi said Palestinians must continue violence against Israel.

"Arms must not be laid down; he who wants freedom must pay the price. Independence is not given as alms," Qaradawi said. According to the Arabic-language newspaper al-Watan, Qaradawi stated: "We must irrigate [the] tree of freedom with our blood. We must not leave the Palestinians alone." Every Muslim "must play his part to help our brothers in Palestine until they obtain their rights," he said. "Not one inch of the Land of Islam must remain in the grasp of infidels and occupiers."

In an interview with OnIslam.net last month, Qaradawi blamed "the Zionist media machine" for popular opposition to the location of the Ground Zero Mosque. Muslims in the U.S. and abroad also have voiced opposition to the plan.Qaradawi's website glorifies violence against Jews and against Palestinians deemed to be supporters of Israel. The front page links to a section entitled "Palestine under siege." At the top of the section is an entry from May 2002 showing the body of a "Palestinian collaborator with Israel" being dragged through the streets of Hebron. It consists of Koranic verses denouncing Muslims who work with "evil Jews" to betray Hamas and other "citizen resistance fighters."In a September speech reported by the Arabic-language website moheet.com, Qaradawi called jihad an Islamic moral duty and said Muslims are permitted to kill Israeli women because they serve in the army. He said the Prophet Mohammad's prohibition on killing the innocent did not apply to Israel because it is an invader and aggressor society which only knows how to violate the rights of others.

In a February interview with BBC Arabic, Qaradawi affirmed his support for suicide bombings. "I supported martyrdom operations," he said, according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) . "This is a necessary thing, as I told them in London. Give the Palestinians tanks, airplanes, and missiles, and they won't carry out martyrdom operations. They are forced to turn themselves into human bombs, in order to defend their land, their honor, and their homeland."

According to excerpts of a speech that aired on Al-Jazeera in January 2009, Qaradawi called on Muslims to put Jews in "their place" as Hitler had done, in revenge for Israeli military operations in Gaza several weeks earlier.

"Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption," he said. "The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them - even though they exaggerated this issue - he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hands of the believers."

At a January 2009 "Gaza Victory Rally" in Doha, Qatar, Qaradawi prayed for the opportunity to kill a Jew before his death. "The only thing that I hope for is that as my life approaches its end, Allah will give me an opportunity to go to the land of Jihad and resistance, even if in a wheelchair. I will shoot Allah's enemies, the Jews, and they will throw a bomb at me, and thus, I will seal my life with martyrdom. Praise be to Allah."

In a January 2009 sermon broadcast on Al-Jazeera television, Qaradawi said Allah "will not allow these people [Jews] to continue to spread corruption in the land. We wait for the revenge of Allah to descend upon them, and Allah willing, it will be by our own hands: 'Fight them, Allah will torment them by your hands, and bring them to disgrace, and will assist you against them, and will heal the hearts of the believers, and you will still the anger of your hearts.' This is my message to the treacherous Jews." He went to urge Allah not to "spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one."

Qaradawi may hold more tolerant views on other issues. But when it comes to terrorism and anti-Semitism, his words and the consistency with which he offers them, speak for themselves.

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All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan al-Qaeda leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime.

I canot even believe what this guy says. Keep a microphone on this guy, he releases more secrets than Vicente Fox:

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Mr al-Hasidi admitted that he had recruited "around 25" men from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against coalition troops in Iraq. Some of them, he said, are "today are on the front lines in Adjabiya".

Mr al-Hasidi insisted his fighters "are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists," but added that the "members of al-Qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader".

His revelations came even as Idriss Deby Itno, Chad's president, said al-Qaeda had managed to pillage military arsenals in the Libyan rebel zone and acquired arms, "including surface-to-air missiles, which were then smuggled into their sanctuaries".

Mr al-Hasidi admitted he had earlier fought against "the foreign invasion" in Afghanistan, before being "captured in 2002 in Peshwar, in Pakistan". He was later handed over to the US, and then held in Libya before being released in 2008.WE ARE TRAINING AL-QAEDA LEADERS! THAT IS WHAT GITMO IS ALL ABOUT! THEY STAND AT THE FOREFRONT OF THE BULLSHIT JASMINE REVOLUTIONS TO PROVOKE THE MOTHER OF ALL WARS IN THE MIDDLE EAST! ALL OF THE ARAB COUNTRIES ARE BEING OVERTHROWN BY AL-QAEDA LEADERS AND WE ARE SUPPRTING THEM BY FREEZING THE ASSETS OF THE LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENTS, RUNNING 24/7 PSYOPS TWITTER REVOLUTIONS, ENABLING VIOLENT "SMART MOBS" AND DROPPING HUNDREDS OF TOMAHAWK MISSILES ON CIVILIANS! THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT KISSINGER DID IN CAMBODIA TO GET POL POT INTO POWER! HE IS NOW DOING IT THROUGHOUT NORTH AFRICA AND HE PLANS ON SLAUGHTERING MILLIONS! PROGRESSIVES, PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF HUMANITY, WAKE THE f**k UP!

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All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

WE ARE TRAINING AL-QAEDA LEADERS! THAT IS WHAT GITMO IS ALL ABOUT! THEY STAND AT THE FOREFRONT OF THE BULLSHIT JASMINE REVOLUTIONS TO PROVOKE THE MOTHER OF ALL WARS IN THE MIDDLE EAST! ALL OF THE ARAB COUNTRIES ARE BEING OVERTHROWN BY AL-QAEDA LEADERS AND WE ARE SUPPRTING THEM BY FREEZING THE ASSETS OF THE LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENTS, RUNNING 24/7 PSYOPS TWITTER REVOLUTIONS, ENABLING VIOLENT "SMART MOBS" AND DROPPING HUNDREDS OF TOMAHAWK MISSILES ON CIVILIANS! THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT KISSINGER DID IN CAMBODIA TO GET POL POT INTO POWER! HE IS NOW DOING IT THROUGHOUT NORTH AFRICA AND HE PLANS ON SLAUGHTERING MILLIONS! PROGRESSIVES, PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF HUMANITY, WAKE THE f**k UP!

The so-called 'Christian' Constantinian-Fascist Arm of the Rothschild-Bilderberg Crime Cabal need their treasured Armageddon Battle Show to depopulate the planet and make the rest of us their indentured sharecropper slaves forevermore. Only their Al CIAduh patsies can do this for them.

During the first five months of last year, a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan went on a shooting spree, killing at least four unarmed civilians and mutilating several of the corpses. The “kill team” – members of the 5th Stryker Brigade stationed near Kandahar – took scores of photos chronicling their kills and their time in Afghanistan. Even before the war crimes became public, the Pentagon went to extraordinary measures to suppress the photos, launching a massive effort to find every file and pull the pictures out of circulation before they could touch off a scandal on the scale of Abu Ghraib.

The images – more than 150 of which have been obtained by Rolling Stone – portray a front-line culture among U.S. troops in which killing innocent civilians is seen as a cause for celebration. “Most people within the unit disliked the Afghan people,” one of the soldiers told Army investigators. “Everyone would say they’re savages.”

Many of the photos depict explicit images of violent deaths that have yet to be identified by the Pentagon. Among the soldiers, the collection was treated like a war memento. It was passed from man to man on thumb drives and hard drives, the gruesome images of corpses and war atrocities filed alongside clips of TV shows, UFC fights and films such as Iron Man 2. One soldier kept a complete set...MOREhttp://www.rollingstone.com/politics/photos/the-kill-team-photos-20110327/0602176

One of the most intense scandals the field of psychology has faced over the last decade is the involvement of several of its members in enabling Bush's worldwide torture regime. Numerous health professionals worked for the U.S. government to help understand how best to mentally degrade and break down detainees. At the center of that controversy was -- and is -- Dr. Larry James. James, a retired Army colonel, was the Chief Psychologist at Guantanamo in 2003, at the height of the abuses at that camp, and then served in the same position at Abu Ghraib during 2004.

Today, Dr. James circulated an excited email announcing, "with great pride," that he has now been selected to serve on the "White House Task Force entitled Enhancing the Psychological Well-Being of The Military Family." In his new position, he will be meeting at the White House with Michelle Obama and other White House officials on Tuesday.

=============================="Morlock posing with an Afghan child. The photos collected by soldiers included many shots of local children, often filed alongside images of bloody casualties. At one point, soldiers in 3rd Platoon talked about throwing candy out of a Stryker vehicle as they drove through a village and shooting the children who came running to pick up the sweets."

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"Another photo of Afghan children. According to one soldier, members of 3rd Platoon also talked about a scenario in which they “would throw candy out in front and in the rear of the Stryker; the Stryker would then run the children over.”

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Think these are spontaneous acts of atrocity?Think these guys would do this without having approval from their commanding officers?Think this could be happening EVERWHERE we have US Military guys stationed?

NO, this is not spontaneous. This is the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA).

The RMA intends to make soldiers act without conscience, because it will 'take over' the actions of soldiers. These are field trials; testing behavior modification of soldiers now for the eventual 'chip' that will govern all military recruits in battle. They can't have their future force soldier with testing their technology. And they are testing their technology NOW.

This is happening everywhere we have soldiers - in Guantanamo, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan - this is PLANNED: dehumanizing, deconstruction of reason, death of logic and conscience; this is the preparation for the RMA's Future Force Soldier.

There are wrecked bodies of their victims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, now Libya...and the guys who are perpetrating these atrocities will come home as wrecks too...

these guys will wind up either in the brig, or in VA hospitals with PTSD, or dead from heroin overdoses or laying somewhere in a gutter. They are lab rats today, they'll be gutter rats later. They're expendable - so even if their brains are completely messed up by the military, they will have performed their duty as future force soldier test subjects.

Because this is the plan: this is the revolution in military affairs.If you haven't read the threads about it, please do.

This is planned dehumanization; this is the RMA preparing, testing the technology of behavioral psychological 'modeling' for the future force soldier.

Ask yourself why Obama has put "the Chief Psychologist at Guantanamo in 2003, at the height of the abuses at that camp, and then served in the same position at Abu Ghraib during 2004" in charge of "Enhancing the Psychological Well-Being of The Military Family".

The guy in charge of the torturer chambers is now going to take care of military families?

The guy who's been directing the torture will understand what he's dealing with when his lab rats return home to their families. He'll recognize their behaviors.

That's useful, so the Obama administration/Pentagon gave him the job of followup testing and observations of the future force soldier lab rats back home with their own children.

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All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

They also did a similar report explaining that Egypt did not have the right to the Nile River and ownership must be given to the UN.

And the last part of this yellow journalsim war mongering insanity invokes Al-CIA-duh.

03 Feb 2011: ReportLibya Water Plan Must be Controlled by Western Powers for Better RationingThe inland Niger delta of Mali is a unique wetland ecosystem that supports a million farmers, fishermen, and herders and a rich diversity of wildlife. But now, the country’s president and Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi have begun a major agricultural project that will divert much of the river’s water and put the delta’s future at risk.http://e360.yale.edu/feature/africas_flourishing_niger_delta_threatened_by_libya_water_plan/2366/by Fred Pearce

Daouda Sanankoua is an aquatic mayor, and proud of it. The elected boss of the district of Deboye arrived for our meeting in the West African state of Mali last month by overnight ferry. At this time of year, the majority of his district is flooded. Thank goodness. “More water is good,” he said, peering at his foreign inquisitor over his glasses. “Everything here depends on the water, but the government is taking our water.”

While we spoke, in the tiny schoolyard of Akka village, a few meters from the lapping waters of Lake Deboye, the headlines around the world brought news of flood disasters in Australia, Brazil, and Sri Lanka. But Daouda was grateful for the annual swelling of the River Niger, which left most of his 24 villages marooned. For without the water, they would be desert.

The floods in what geographers call the inner Niger delta nurture abundant fish for the Bozo people, who lay their nets in every waterway and across the lakes. As the waters recede, they leave wet soils in which the Bambara people plant millet and rice, and they expose vast aquatic pastures of bourgou (or hippo grass) that sustain cattle and goats brought by nomadic Fulani herders from as far away as Mauritania and Burkina Faso. This inland delta is Africa’s second-largest floodplain and one of its most unique wetlands. Seen from space, it is an immense smudge of green and blue on the edge of the Sahara.

But this rare and magnificently productive ecosystem is now facing an unprecedented threat, as a Libyan-backed enterprise has begun construction of a project inside Mali that will divert large amounts of Niger River water for extensive irrigation upstream.

This is all part of a grand plan by Gaddafi to make his desert nation self-sufficient in food.This is all part of a grand plan by Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi to make his desert nation self-sufficient in food through long-term deals with nearby countries to grow food for Libya. Mali’s president has agreed to the scheme, which numerous experts say will enhance Libyan food security at the expense of Malian food security by sucking dry the river that feeds the inland delta, diminishing the seasonal floods that support rich biodiversity — and thriving agriculture and fisheries vital to a million of Mali’s poorest citizens — on the edge of the Sahara desert.

“More people will lose than win from most irrigation projects in Mali,” says Jane Madgwick, CEO of Netherlands-based Wetlands International, with whom I traveled for three days in the inner Niger delta. “These projects will decrease food security by damaging the livelihoods of those most vulnerable. What they are trying to do at the moment makes no sense because there is simply not enough water.”

Larger than Belgium, the Niger’s inland delta, laced with rivers and marshes, runs for 250 miles from northeast to southwest in central Mali, one of Africa’s poorest countries. The rights to harvest the delta’s fish and graze pastures are based on long-standing custom neither known nor recognized beyond its borders. I had spent days exploring this world as the seasonal floodwaters began to recede. I watched the arrival of the Fulani and talked to fishing families as they packed up their homes and left their villages to set up temporary camps beside the pools where the fish would concentrate in the weeks ahead.

Out there in the waters somewhere were a few surviving hippos, African manatees, and the odd crocodile. Madgwick constantly grabbed her binoculars to spot kingfishers, marsh harriers, cormorants, and purple herons, many of them winter migrants from Europe. Her organization is working with locals to revive flooded forests destroyed in past droughts, to maintain fish ponds among the flooded grasses, to extend the new practice of cultivating bourgou, and to encourage kitchen gardens planted by women’s groups.

But all this is threatened by events upstream, said the mayor: Others want his water. Over a torch-lit evening meal of Nile perch, millet porridge, and bananas — all fruits of the wetland — he said that this year the rains were good and the waters high. But even so, some dams built prior to the Libyan project, which irrigate 235,000 acres, have already diverted water and changed the timing of when it reaches the wetland, damaging the wet pastures and upsetting fish breeding. Some species have disappeared as a result. And, say Madgwick and others, much worse is to come.

Libya’s wholesale move into Malian irrigation and agriculture is the result of a secret deal between Mali’s president, Amadou Toumani Toure, and Libya’s Colonel Gadaffi. Paid for by Gadaffi’s sovereign investment fund, the Libya Africa Portfolio Fund for Investment, the deal hands the land to a Libyan-controlled organization called Malibya for 50 years and gives the Libyans undisclosed rights to the region’s water. Why would the Mali president sign up to this?

Local campaigners say their government is in thrall — and hock — to Libya because it has become dependent on Libya for aid and investment. Many of its civil servants work in offices built by Libya, and international visitors stay at Libyan-built hotels. And, says Lamine Coulibaly, head of communications for the Mali small farmers’ union, CNOP, the government is so obsessed with getting investment for its agriculture that it cannot see when that investment will do more harm than good to its people.

Before going to the delta, I had visited a new canal stretching 25 miles north from the River Niger to 250,000 acres of proposed irrigated land at the edge of the marshes. The canal, part of the Libyan project, was dug last year by Chinese contractors, who are now preparing the first 15,000 acres of fields.

The project is one of many major investments by Libya all across Mali. Gadaffi is using his petrodollars to fund government buildings, hotels, and other high-profile infrastructure. Critics such as Coulibaly call the farm mega-project a land grab. But far more important, it is also a water grab on a huge scale. Coulibaly adds: “We have enough land; we don’t have enough water.”

The delta is a vital green resource for both humans and wildlife on the edge of the Sahara.the amount of water taken from the river for irrigation. The director general of Malibya, Abdalilah Youssef, boasted in 2008 that his new canal could supply up to 4 cubic kilometers of water a year to the enterprise’s fields of rice, tomatoes, and fodder crops for cattle. The current take for all other existing irrigation projects is 2.7 cubic kilometers a year.

Already, engineers at the Office du Niger — an agency created by presidential fiat to develop land upstream of the inner Niger delta — admit they are struggling to maintain the minimum flow of 40 cubic meters a second down the Niger to the delta during the dry season, when an estimated 70 percent of river flow goes to farms rather than the wetland. The effects of taking more could be catastrophic on the floating forests and bourgou pastures at the heart of the delta’s ecosystems and human livelihoods.

A vital green resource for both humans and wildlife on the edge of the Sahara, the delta is a wintering ground for millions of migrating European birds and is vital to the flow of the Niger River and its fisheries. All this is threatened by the Libyan project. For example, planned dams and diversions will reduce the growth of the important bourgou grasses by almost two-thirds, according to a study by Leo Zwarts, a water management expert for the Dutch government.

Now, however, Malian officials have no control over the project. Their president has signed that away. They say the Libyans have carried out a social and environmental impact assessment, although its contents have not been made public. The job of the Malian officials is simply to organize compensation for the thousands of people who are expected to lose their homes to the irrigation projects and to find new land for those farmers who refuse to be turned into Gadaffi’s laborers.

There is no official confirmation, but few doubt that the rice grown here will go to Libya. More than 1,200 miles away across the Sahara, Gaddafi has spent $30 billion over the past three decades building the Great Man-made River, which pumps ancient water from deep beneath the desert through 1,800 miles of huge pipes to irrigate farms on the Mediterranean coast. But even with that giant hydrological enterprise in operation, Libya still depends on foreign markets for three-quarters of its grain.

The giant farm being built on the edge of the inner Niger delta by Malibya is his next big gambit.

Mali of course needs development. It is changing and so are the wants and needs of its people. Schools and clinics are starting to appear; every fishing Any disruption of the region’s traditional way of life could feed Al Qaeda’s violent agenda.

encampment, however temporary, has a TV antenna; the fishing nets are Any disruption of the region’s traditional way of life could feed Al Qaeda’s violent agenda.

made of nylon and come from China; the kids wear Obama T-shirts and support European soccer teams; motorbikes are starting to replace donkeys; there is sporadic cellphone coverage and young village men break the still wetland nights with their sound systems. These days, too, traditional lines of ethnicity and livelihood are blurred as cattle herders take up fishing, fishers harvest grain, and millet farmers go herding. But the fecundity of the delta remains the basis of their survival in one of the poorest countries on Earth.

Many government officials see saving the wetland as an environmental priority they cannot afford in the push for human development. But in fact, maintaining the wetland is essential to development.

This year, the Mali government is expected to publish a ten-year “sustainable development plan” for the delta. Early drafts are said to sanction a big expansion of irrigation. European aid agencies funding the process have reportedly demanded a rewrite. Whatever it finally contains, the plan faces a long consultation process before being enacted, by which time the game may be over, the water swallowed up by the Libyan project and others.

A Battle Over Precious WaterA dispute between Egypt and upstream African nations has brought to the fore a long-standing controversy over who has rights to the waters of the Nile. The outcome, Fred Pearce writes, could have profound consequences for the ecological health of the river and for one of the world’s largest tropical wetlands.

This may not just be a local matter either. With Al Qaeda busy recruiting disaffected people such as the Tuareg nomads around Mali’s borders, any disruption to the traditional way of life could feed its violent agenda.

So this is a key moment that will likely determine the fate of one of Africa’s great natural resources, a living embodiment of how humans and nature can live not just in harmony but in synergy. Get it wrong and they will be creating new desert while claiming all the while to be greening it. Get it wrong and the repercussions could spread far and wide.

As we left the heart of the wetland for the provincial town of Mopti, our boat kept grounding on the bottom of the narrower waterways. Macaques laughed as we scrambled to resume our journey. The low water was simply a sign of the changing season, but it felt like an omen for the wetland.

Egypt has threatened legal action if its current water ‘rights’ are not upheld.

A Battle Over Precious Water

A dispute between Egypt and upstream African nations has brought to the fore a long-standing controversy over who has rights to the waters of the Nile. The outcome could have profound consequences for the ecological health of the river and for one of the world’s largest tropical wetlands.

A simmering dispute over who owns the waters of the River Nile is heating up. From its headwaters in Ethiopia and the central African highlands to the downstream regional superpower Egypt, the Nile flows through 10 nations. But by a quirk of British colonial history, only Egypt and its neighbor Sudan have any rights to its water.

That is something the upstream African nations say they can no longer accept. Yet as the nations of the Nile bicker over its future, nobody is speaking up for the river itself — for the ecosystems that depend on it, or for the physical processes on which its future as a life-giving resource in the world’s largest desert depends. The danger is that efforts to stave off water wars may lead to engineers trying to squeeze yet more water from the river — and doing the Nile still more harm. What is at risk here is not only the Nile, but also the largest wetland in Africa and one of the largest tropical wetlands in the world — the wildlife-rich Sudd.

Built in the 1960s, the High Aswan dam allows Egypt to control the flow of the Nile.In May, five upstream Nile nations — Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda — signed a treaty declaring their rights to a share of the river’s flow. They said they would no longer be bound by a treaty drawn up by the British in 1959. That treaty had given Egypt 55.5 cubic kilometers of the river’s flow and Sudan 18.5 cubic kilometers, but no formal entitlements for any nation upstream.

In essence the five nations were calling Egypt’s bluff. Egypt entirely controls the river’s flow from the moment it crosses the border from Sudan and is captured by the High Aswan dam, built by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser with Russian help in the 1960s. But Egypt’s control depends on what comes downstream, over which it has no control. In the past, Egypt has frequently said any attempt by upstream nations to take what it regarded as Egyptian water would result in war.

Egypt’s concern is understandable. Some 75 million of Egypt’s 80 million inhabitants live on the river’s delta and narrow river valley. The Nile is the lifeblood of Egypt. It irrigates the nation’s food and cash crops and generates its energy, and the river’s fish provide much of Egyptians’ protein.

Egypt’s leaders are prepared to countenance their neighbors building hydroelectric dams that hold back water, provided that water ultimately returns to the river to flow on downstream. But they are not prepared to allow countries to take water out of the river for consumptive uses like agriculture. Egypt’s biggest concern is Ethiopia, whose Lake Tana is the source of the largest of the river’s two main tributaries, the Blue Nile, and whose own 80 million inhabitants have heavy unmet water needs, especially for irrigation.

So, after the breakaway group of upstream nation declared their own water rights, Egypt reacted earlier this month by going on a high-level diplomatic offensive with offers of aid, backed up by threats of legal action if its current water “rights” are not upheld.

Thanks to the Nile, Egypt still has much more water per capita than many of its neighbors in the Middle East. Much of its farming is wasteful of water. But existing entitlements are a “red line” that the nation cannot allow to be crossed, says Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Abul Gheit.

That’s the hydro-politics. But all current negotiations begin from the assumption that the river is a pipe carrying water to the sea — and that the only deal that needs to be done is who can take what from the pipe. Rivers are a bit more complicated than that, and yet nobody is talking about setting aside any of the Nile’s precious flow for nature.

The Nile, by some measures the world’s longest river, is also among its most beleaguered. Its entire annual flood is captured behind the High Aswan dam, shimmering in the Sahara Desert at the border between Egypt and Sudan. The water is then fed downstream to meet the needs of Egyptian farmers. Most years virtually no water reaches the sea.

These changes are already having damaging effects. While the dam releases the water, it does not release the river’s heavy silt loads — mostly The Nile River delta is eroding — in some places by 10 meters a year.the product of erosion of the friable hills of Ethiopia. Once, the silt The Nile River delta is eroding — in some places by 10 meters a year.

maintained the fertility of Egyptian fields and prevented the river’s delta from being washed away by the waves of the Mediterranean. But now the silt stays behind the dam, gradually accumulating. Egyptian soils are kept fertile with artificial fertilizer (manufactured using energy generated by the dam’s turbines), while the delta, which contains two-thirds of Egypt’s farmland, is eroding — in some places by tens of meters per year. Once-thriving farming villages like Borg-el Borellos now lie submerged out to sea.

In the long run, current abuse of the river is not sustainable. But still politicians want to extract more from the river, not less. Since all the water is now taken most years, the most obvious option is to reduce nature’s own “wastage” of water through evaporation.

One place to do this stands out. A century ago, British imperial engineers first eyed the Sudd. This is a huge wetland in southern Sudan, stretching for more than 40,000 square kilometers. Its shimmering desert waters are fed by the Nile’s second tributary, the White Nile, which moves very slowly, its water dawdling for up to a year as it makes its way through the myriad channels of the Sudd. This water sustains a major ecosystem in the desert, with thick beds of floating papyrus, thousands of hippos and crocodiles, large herds of elephants, and millions of migratory birds, while also sustaining pastures for the cattle herds of tribes like the Dinka, who live on the fringes of the Sudd. But hydrologists estimate that the White Nile loses half its flow in the process — largely to evaporation.

Engineers developed a plan to a cut a canal to allow the White Nile to bypass the Sudd. Back in 1978, a 2,300-ton canal-digging machine from If a proposed canal is built, at least a quarter of the huge Sudd wetland would be lost.Pakistan, known as a Bucketwheel, was dismantled and dragged by truck, train, steamer and camel to southern Sudan, where it began cutting the Jonglei canal. Egypt, the sponsor of the project, said that by reducing evaporation in the Sudd, it would deliver an extra 5 cubic kilometers of water downstream — water that it agreed to share with Sudan.

The machine had dug 260 of the planned 360 kilometers of canal by 1984, when the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army, fighting for southern independence from the Muslim north, raided the canal camp and took foreign hostages. War intensified, and no work has been done since. The canal remains a dead end, and the Bucketwheel sits abandoned in the desert.

But peace broke out in southern Sudan in 2005, after the region gained partial autonomy. The president of southern Sudan, Salva Kiir, has held talks with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak about the prospects of resuming work on the canal, as part of a range of reconstruction projects that Kiir hopes Egypt will undertake in his fledgling country. The final hurdle may be a referendum on full independence for South Sudan, which is due in January.

For politicians, the Jonglei canal is the perfect deal. It will allow more water to be taken from the Nile upstream without reducing how much crosses the border into Egypt. In return for being allowed to dig the canal, Egypt will offer development aid for a new nation.

The canal would not completely dry up the Lake Nasser, Egypt’s water bank, is the biggest source of water loss on the river.wetland, according to a study last year by Erwin Lamberts of the University of Twente in the Netherlands. Some water would continue to flow into the swamps in the wet season, and rains would maintain other areas. But at least a quarter of the Sudd and much of its floodplains would be lost. (The wetland is also threatened by oil prospecting. The French company Total is expected to resume drilling in the Sudd this month.)

There is another option — one that has not yet surfaced in political discussions and one that requires a real regional settlement on the future of the Nile.

Engineers have been so concerned about evaporation from the Sudd that they have forgotten about another major loss of water caused by the heat of the desert sun. Behind the High Aswan dam on the Egypt-Sudan border sits the huge Lake Nasser, Egypt’s water bank. But it is an amazingly inefficient bank. Each year, between 10 and 16 cubic kilometers of water evaporates from its surface. That is more than a quarter of the river’s entire flow some years — and around three times what the Jonglei canal might “save.”

The very structure that Egypt uses to control the Nile is also the biggest source of water loss on the river. This is not a new discovery. British imperial engineers always opposed building a giant dam at Aswan precisely for this reason. They wanted a series of dams in the mountains way upstream, probably in the deep ravines of the Blue Nile in Ethiopia, where reservoirs would have a smaller surface area and the evaporative power of the sun would be less fierce.

The Mekong has long flowed freely, supporting one of the world’s great inland fisheries, Fred Pearce writes. But China is building a series of dams on the 2,800-mile river that will restrict its natural flow and threaten the sustenance of tens of millions of Southeast Asians.

President Nasser, the father of modern Egypt, could never have countenanced that. He wanted an Egyptian dam on Egyptian soil to capture Egypt’s water. But that grand vision is now breaking down as his upstream neighbors call Egypt’s bluff on the Nile.

It would be expensive, and a major concession for Egypt to allow the main faucet on the river to move to another country — particularly its regional rival, Ethiopia. But the fact is that it would massively add to the amount of water flowing down the Nile.

So, just possibly, a grand settlement of the long dispute over who owns the Nile might create a more sensible solution, with common control of a single regulating dam in a place that makes the most hydrological sense. The shimmering edifice of the High Aswan — monument to hydrological folly — could be dismantled. And then there might be enough water left for nature, as well as for the people of the Nile.

Logged

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

According to right-wing Italian journalist Franco Bechis, plans to spark the Benghazi rebellion were initiated by French intelligence services in November 2010. As Miguel Martinez from the progressive ComeDonChisciotte website observes, these revelations which have the blessing of the Italian secret services should be interpreted as the sign of internal rivalries within the European capitalist camp.Voltaire Network wishes to point out that Paris promptly paired up with London in its scheme to overthrow Colonel Khadafi (Franco-British expeditionary force). This plan was recalibrated in the context of the Arab revolutions and taken over by Washington, which imposed its own objectives (counter-revolution in the Arab world and landing AfriCom on the Black continent). Therefore, the current coalition arises from a diversity of ambitions, which accounts for its internal contradictions. The timeline of events which set the stage for the military intervention against Libya is presented below.

Timeline of events

October 6, 2011Nouri Mesmari turned himself to the French secret service and according to the Italians; he masterminded the revolution against Gaddafi. The document was leaked to Italian newspaper Libero.

Mesmari is referred in the documents by the French secret service as ‘The Libyan Wikileak’ because he gave them all the details within the regime and gave them an account of who’s who within Libya and who they should contact and what not.

With all the inside information, by mid January, the Italians say that the French had paved the way for the beginning of the revolution against Gaddafi.

October 20, 2010Nouri Masmari boarded a Libyan Arab plane directed for Tunis accompanied by all his family. The day after, they were en route to France, claiming that he travelled to Paris due to health reasons. He stayed at the Concorde Lafayette Hotel.

In Paris he never met any doctors. In subsequent days he had several top secret meetings with high secret service French agents and other top government functionaries close to Nicolas Sarkozy.

November 16, 2010A long car cade of official cars is parked in front of the hotel Concorde Lafayette whilst in the Mesmari suite; an important meeting is taking place. It is a long meeting.

November 18, 2010A French ‘commercial’ delegation leaves for Benghazi. In the delegation there are officials from the Ministry of Agriculture and representitives from Cam Cereals, France Export Cereals, Cargill, Glencore, France Agrimer, Soufflet, Louis Dreyfous, and Comagra. Among the delegation, posing as government officials, there are French secret service agents and military staff. Their ‘business’ was meeting army officers indicated by Mesmari who will be ready to defect from the Libyan army.

While in Benghazi, contact is made with Libyan air defence colonel, Abdallah Gehani, who was indicated by Nouri Mesmari as an army officer who is ready to collaborate to topple Muammar Gaddafi. Gehani had good contacts in Tunisia too.

It is a secret operation but the Libyan regime suspects that a double game was being played and that something was about to happen.

November 28, 2010An international warrant of arrest is issued by the Libyan government for Nouri Mesrami. Foreign Minister Musa Koussa is held responsible for the defection of Mesrami and his passport is withdrawn by the authorities.

December 2, 2010French authorities announce that they have arrested a collaborator of Gaddafi. Word reaches Gaddafi that Mesrami is on house arrest at the Concorde Lafayette Hotel and is furious that his former friend and colleague asked for political asylum in France, where he still resides to this date. In fact during the first week of the uprising in Libya Mesrami gave interviews to Al Jazeera from a Paris studio.

Muammar Gaddafi sends messages to Nouri Mesrami to win him back saying that he forgives him for what he did and invites him back to Libya.

December 16, 2010An emissary of Gaddafi, Abdallah Mansour head of state media, is arrested at the Hotel Concorde Lafayette trying to contact Mesrami.

December 23, 2010A delegation of Libyans arrives in Paris for meetings with Mesrami and other French officials. The Libyans are Ali Ounes Mansouri, Farj Charrant and Fathi Boukhris. These three men will be known later together with Ali Hajj as leaders of the revolution, that started from Benghazi.

The Libyan delegation together with Mesrami and French military and secret service personnel dined at an elegant French restaurant at the Champs Elisée.

Decmber 25 – 31, 2010Between Christmas and the start of the New Year, the French have every details and inside information available and in the compilation of the Maghreb Confidential document, it is stated that “the situation in Benghazi is boiling”.

Januray 22, 2011Colonel Abdallah Gehani is arrested by the chief of the secret service in Cerenaica Aoudh Saaiti. Two days later the Colonel is transferred to a prison in Tripoli and accused with treason with the aim of holding back any dissent. But it was too late, the ball was already rolling and as the first signs of the revolution were seen a few days later after a prominent lawyer, Fathi Tarbel was arrested. The protest soon turned into clashes and as army officials deserted, the rebels advanced a took over important cities but so far they failed to take Tripoli.

The French government lead the airstrikes over Libya, was the first European state to recognise the new Libyan National Council and establish diplomatic relations. Since the Italian government was made aware of the documents, it started to take the back seat on the Libya crisis, and Prime Minister Berlusconi said that Italian military planes will not be engaged in airstrikes and that he hopes that it does not end into a war.

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

Achieving new heights of hypocrisy, the U.S government is hyping the threat of Libyan-backed reprisal terror attacks inside the United States, while launching air strikes in support of so-called “protesters” who have commandeered fighter jets and tanks, and are in fact Islamic fundamentalist Al-Qaeda cells who want to impose sharia law in Libya. The New York Times reports that Libya may “lash out” against the Orwellian “no fly zone,” which in reality represents constant bombardment, by sending terrorists to carry out attacks against U.S. interests. “Asked if American officials feared whether Colonel Qaddafi could open a new terrorism front, President Obama’s top counterterrorism official John O. Brennan said: “Qaddafi has the penchant to do things of a very concerning nature. We have to anticipate and be prepared for things he might try to do to flout the will of the international community.” “Al Qaeda has a demonstrated track record of trying to exploit political vacuums, political change or uncertainty in a number of countries,” Mr. Brennan added. “The situation in Libya now will be no exception.” This is pretty rich considering the fact that it was British MI6 and the CIA who paid Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda $100,000 dollars to assassinate Gaddafi in 1996. In 2002 French intelligence experts revealed how western intelligence agencies bankrolled a Libyan Al-Qaeda cell controlled directly by Bin Laden to hatch a plot to kill Gaddafi that was foiled in March 1996. The cell was led by Anas al-Liby, who was with Bin Laden in Sudan before Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan.

Indeed, it was Gaddafi’s Libya who put out the first Interpol warrant for Bin Laden’s arrest in 1998. Western intelligence agencies blocked the warrant from being pursued, and allowed Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda to go on and kill more than 200 people in the truck bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Statements of support for Libya’s revolution by al-Qaeda and leading Islamists have led to fears that military action by the West might be playing into the hands of its ideological enemies. WikiLeaks cables, independent analysts and reporters have all identified supporters of Islamist causes among the opposition to Col Gaddafi’s regime, particularly in the towns of Benghazi and Dernah. An al-Qaeda leader of Libyan origin, Abu Yahya al-Libi, released a statement backing the insurrection a week ago, while Yusuf Qaradawi, the Qatar-based, Muslim Brotherhood-linked theologian issued a fatwa authorising Col Gaddafi’s military entourage to assassinate him. But they also agree that the leading roles in the revolution are played by a similar cross-section of society as that in Egypt next door – liberals, nationalists, those with personal experience of regime brutality and Islamists who subscribe to democratic principles. The WikiLeaks cables, initially revealed by The Daily Telegraph and dating from 2008, identified Dernah in particular as a breeding ground for fighters in a number of causes, including Afghanistan and Iraq.

The nomination of Robert Gates to be Secretary of Defense must be rejected. Gates is deeply implicated in three decades of crimes by the intelligence community. There is no reason to think he intends to begin the necessary rapid departure of US forces from Iraq. His nomination by Bush can only be read as a deliberate provocation directed against the new Democratic Congress. Will the Democrats fight back, or will they capitulate? The American people are watching the Democratic Senators carefully, and they are appalled by the self-congratulatory and clubby narcissism of the Senate at a time when US forces are facing encirclement and decimation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senators must not only vote against Gates; they must stop the confirmation process with a filibuster. A look at Gates’ sordid record shows why.

Robert Gates was an integral part of the gun-running, drug-running, and death squad murders lumped under the heading of the Iran-Contra scandal. Gates started in Iran-contra as a stooge of William Casey, and continued under Bush the elder.

When Gates was nominated by Reagan to be head of the CIA in 1987, his role in Iran-contra crimes was already so filthy and so blatant that he was forced to drop out of contention under questioning. In doing this, Gates was seeking to defend his new master, George H.W. Bush, who at that time was preparing a presidential bid for 1988. The elder Bush was the czar of all Reagan-Bush covert operations, including Iran-contra. Gates fell on his sword to avoid revelations which would have doomed the candidacy of Bush the elder. Payback for Gates came in June 1991, when he was nominated once again to be head of the CIA, this time by Bush the elder. Sam Nunn and some others posed embarrassing questions, but this time the cover-up of Gates’ Iran-contra role was supervised by Sen. David Boren of the Bush Skull & Bones clique. The Democrats, intimated by the elder Bush’s apparent victory in the first Gulf war, rolled over. If Gates was too dirty to even get to a vote in committee in 1987, how can he be acceptable today? If Democratic Senators like Levin and Biden opposed Gates in 1991, how can they find him acceptable for a much more important post at a time of far greater crisis?

Gates’ resume is marked by a total absence of independent and competent judgment. His pedigree is rather that of a stooge who serves powerful masters. The first was Reagan’s CIA Director William Casey, the kingpin of Iran-contra. The second was George H.W. Bush, who took over that role from Casey. Gates appears as a Bush family retainer, as when he was tapped by the family in 1999 to become Dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. Gates is a secret government toady, not the autonomous figure of integrity required to terminate US involvement in Bush’s catstrophic Iraq adventure.Most damning of all is the fact that Gates was one of the founders of al Qaeda, the CIA’s Arab Legion which was assembled to attack the Soviets in Afghanistan. Gates is thus part of the infrastructure that produced the patsies of 9/11:

According to former CIA Director Robert Gates’s memoir From the Shadows, the big expansion of the US covert operation in Afghanistan began in 1984. During this year, “the size of the CIA’s covert program to help the Mujaheddin increased several times over,” reaching a level of about $500 million in US and Saudi payments funneled through the Zia regime in Pakistan. As Gates recalled, “it was during this period [1985] that we began to learn of a significant increase in the number of Arab nationals from other countries who had traveled to Afghanistan to fight in the Holy War against the Soviets. They came from Syria, Iraq, Algeria, and elsewhere, and most fought with the Islamic fundamentalist Muj groups, particularly that headed by Abdul Resaul Sayyaf. We examined ways to increase their participation, perhaps in the form of some sort of ‘international brigade,’ but nothing came of it. Years later, these fundamentalist fighters trained by the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan would begin to show up around the world, from the Middle East to New York City, still fighting their Holy War – only now including the United States among their enemies. Our mission was to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan. We expected a post-Soviet Afghanistan to be ugly, but never considered that it would become a haven for terrorists operating worldwide.” (Gates 349) But the international brigade Gates talked about was in fact created – as the group now known as al Qaeda. (Tarpley, 9/11 Synthetic Terror, pp.139-140 )

This is the same al Qaeda which provided the troupe of patsies, psychotics, and double agents (bin Laden, Atta, Moussaoui, etc.) which were used to pin the 9/11 attacks on Arabs and Moslems – instead of the US bankers’ rogue network which actually carried out 9/11 for geopolitical reasons. Gates is up to his ears in the terror apparatus of this rogue network, the September criminals who created 9/11.

Logged

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

Bush declared the constitution is just a GD piece of paper,Soetoro furthers this issue to explain why the Constitution must be burned. Our one and only defense against tyranny, our forefathers fought and died to see this dream of independence and equality realised. Nothing is perfect, but the constitution is the best honorable men could devise. It is our safeguard, our safety net, our protector.. Therefor, the elite globalists MUST destroy it, this is but one of the many examples.Daffi (Gaddafi) , has been mentioned in this regard, the true reason for the USA-NATO attack, one point was the water supply system, and his bid for Interpoll to introduce a warrant for Bin Laden.1998. The discrepancy's mount up, whats the real deal?

Please tell me. Why would a man "arm his people with million guns" and place himself to "rule over them," and then go attack them! A would-be ruler doesn't start out by killing his people as a way to remain in power...